


Box Dye

by dansunedisco



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blanket Littlefinger Warning, F/M, Hair Dyeing, Liminal Space Aesthetic, Modern Westeros, Past Abuse, Talking & Not Talking About Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25244929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dansunedisco/pseuds/dansunedisco
Summary: The last image he has of Sansa Stark is at Robb’s funeral.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 16
Kudos: 111





	Box Dye

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was born from a prompt I'd received from an anon ages ago asking for Jon as a hairstylist who loves playing with Sansa's hair. This is 100% NOT that story.
> 
> I'm sorry, anon. I hope you might like this anyway.

The last image he has of Sansa Stark is at Robb’s funeral. Red hair pulled back into a severe knot. Black dress, black shoes, black mascara. Her chin trembling as she turns into him. Slender, pale fingers against his freshly pressed dress shirt. His hand coming up to cup the back of her skull. 

Arya’s hand squeezing his. Bran staring into the grave. Stoically accepting his sudden and unwelcome position as man of the house. Jeyne and the new baby weeping, cheeks pressed against one another, faces turned away from the portrait on display before the headstone. A wreath hung over the shiny black marble, green and vibrant against the dreary grey of the rainy morning.

He remembers quiet noises and rustling fabrics and meaningless hymns. He remembers snapshots in time. Faded at the edges, worn and fragile. But Sansa is a clear outline amid the blurred picture, and he hangs onto the red-and-black of her for as long as he can.

  
  
  
  


Now, her hair is bleach blonde, brassy roots and yellow ends like she did the job herself, and she’s wearing ripped jeans and black boots. In light of all that’s changed outwardly, the thought that jumps forward is that she really should be wearing a thicker jacket. It’s summer in the north, but winter lingers in the night’s air. She doesn’t have gloves, or a beanie, and the snowy slush will soak into her socks, her shoes.

The car she’s stepped out of drives off and she walks up to him without looking back. Parking lot gravel crunches underfoot.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asks, tapping his box of cigarettes against his palm. He should ask her what she’s doing coming to The Crow as she is, or what she’s doing back in Winterfell, period, but he’s a little drunk, a little stoned. He’s always been a little stupid when it comes to her.

Her eyebrows raise. They’re still copper red and severe. She looks like Catelyn did when Theon and Robb and he would unsuccessfully try to sneak in the back window, no sympathy for their stupid teenaged aches and pains the morning after. “Hi, Jon,” she says, “it’s great to see you, too.”

He offers her a cigarette before his own, but she declines with a shake of her head. “Been a while.”

“Arya said you’d be here.” Her breath comes out as a white puff. “I mean-- it’s been three years, but I heard-- I figured you’d still be there, even if she didn’t say so.”

Years ago he would’ve prickled at the insinuation -- that no one like _him_ ever gets to leave -- but she’s not wrong. He is here. He never left. “What happened to your hair?”

She touches the ends, looks down like she’s self-conscious. “What, you don’t like it?”

“It’ll grow on me.” A memory swims up. A good one, for a change. “D’you remember when you got it in your mind to be a hairdresser--”

“ _Stylist_ \--”

“--right, and you went and bought all that bleach from down at that corner store?”

“I begged you for a _week_ to let me frost your tips.”

“They came out orange. And instead of letting me go to a proper barber, you convinced me you could trim me up.” He was half-bald in the end, and he swears the perpetual cowlick at the back of his head is of her doing. “I’ve never been so savaged, and haven’t been since.”

She groans and shakes her head like she’s trying to shake the memory loose. “Fuck off, my hair isn’t that bad.”

He tugs the blonde ends, then wraps a thick strand around his index finger. Like he used to when they were kids and she’d crawl over his lap during movie night, demanding he braid her hair. _I want to look like Jonquil,_ she would say. Ask your mother, he’d reply, but she’d insist only he could accomplish the spiraling plait that was Jonquil’s signature look. He would huff and pretend not to like it, but he always had a feeling Sansa knew exactly how much it meant to him. How much he liked to pretend he belonged on the Stark couch, in the Stark home, with the Stark kids. 

“I beg to differ.” He catches her gaze drop to his mouth. “No offense.”

“You’d said it would grow on you,” she accuses, but there’s no heat behind her words.

“Like moss on a rock.”

To this day, it’s a mystery how he’d ever convinced himself that she hated him. But that was always their problem, wasn’t it? She knew him better than he knew himself, and she was the only Stark he could never quite figure out. Not until it was too late, and she was a world away.

They drift closer. The pale column of her throat is a flushed, blotchy red. He imagines pressing his lips there, at the soft junction of her neck and shoulder. He imagines biting down. Her eyelids flutter, half-lidding like she’s waiting for him -- to kiss her. To come to his senses. He swallows and steps back, pretends he doesn’t see her sway towards him or the disappointed pinch between her eyebrows.

It’s the wrong move, or maybe the right move, and she slowly unfolds in front of him in pieces: She licks her lips, pretty pink tongue darting out against her pretty pink lips. Her mouth twitches like she’s trying not to laugh, or cry. She pulls her bottom in by the teeth and her eyes go glassy. She blows out a slow, practiced breath. Her shoulders work up and down.

Sam’s always joking that Jon needs to see someone about his White Knight tendencies -- that witnessing can be just as therapeutic and helpful as taking action. But he’s always had a hard time standing by when it comes to Sansa. Whatever she came here for, it wasn’t to lament on her hair color, and he’s done pulling at the strings for now.

He crams his packet of cigarettes back in his pocket; pulls her into a half-hug before he can overthink and rubs his palm up and down her arm. “Hey.”

“They say women and their hair have an emotional bond, you know.” She trembles against him. She laughs a little, sniffs like she’s trying to hold back tears. She swipes at her nose with the back of her hand. “I have no idea what I’m doing. If it wasn’t clear enough.”

“Whatever it is, we can fix it.” He squeezes her tighter to him. Her skin is ice-cold. “And if we can’t fix it, we’ll burn it to the ground.”

She makes a little broken noise in the back of her throat. “Take me home.”

It’s neither a question nor a demand. It’s inevitable.

He’s too tipsy to risk driving with the both of them, so he steers them to the side of the building where the heater vent blows hot air as they wait for the cab he calls.

They wait so long Jon’s sobered up and Sansa droops against his chest. They make small-talk along the way, and he learns she packed a bag only hours before and boarded a last-minute flight from King’s Landing, hence her jeans and threadbare t-shirt. Two stop-overs and a run through Highgarden International later, she rolled up to Winterfell to discover an empty house.

“There’s a guy,” she says about Arya. “She won’t tell me as much, the little sneak, but she’s no match for my romantic instincts.”

“Gendry,” he supplies. He relishes in her surprised look. “They’ve been seeing each other off-and-on for a few moons now. Good guy.”

“That’s _it_?”

“There’s not much else to say.”

“That’s not true. Arya having a boyfriend…” She huffs, frustrated at being thwarted. “That’s like finding Theon Greyjoy settled down and happily married, or-- or _you._ ”

“I could be.”

Her thumb brushes against his hand, searching for the wedding band they both know isn’t there. He twists his wrist so they come palm-to-palm. She threads their fingers together, gives a squeeze before settling for an easy clasp. “If my husband was doing this with anyone but _me_ , I’d be very upset.” Her tone is light, matter-of-fact. “And I know you’d never.”

“Never?”

“Cheat. Hurt me.”

“And in this scenario, then. I’m your husband.”

“I’ve decided I’m a bit young to be tied down at present, Jon Snow, but for the sake of hypotheticals. Yes. _I do._ ”

As she speaks, her breath puffs out warm against his chin. He can smell her chapstick from here, and the clean scent of her perfume. Up close, he sees the dark circles her concealer can’t hide. The smudge of mascara hastily wiped away from tears that threatened to dislodge her carefully put-together appearance. He wants to tell her she’s beautiful. He wants to ask who or what she’s running from.

The cab arrives before he musters the courage. The drive home blurs together, and he tips the driver an extra twenty gold dragons when they arrive. He steers Sansa along the brickwork path to the back of the house he’s leasing -- the basement apartment is all his -- and does not read into how she presses the length of her body against his back as he unlocks the deadbolt. She’s exhausted. She can barely stand.

Ghost lifts his head from his dog bed as they enter, and quickly heaves up and trots over when he sees Jon’s brought home an old friend. He bumps his massive head against Sansa’s thighs.

“ _Ghost_ ,” Sansa coos. Two hands get lost in his white fur as she bends over to lavish attention on him. He licks her cheek. “Hi, baby. I’ve missed you, yes I have.”

Jon leans against his kitchen counter and watches, amused, as his dog receives a much more enthusiastic welcome home greeting than even he. In a perfect world, he thinks, this would be his every day. Could have been. He swallows down the regret bubbling at the back of his throat. “Want a tour?”

She nods.

He turns lights on as they go, but there isn’t much to see. His place is tidy and neat. There’s the kitchenette, cramped living room, an office space that doubles as a home gym, and a bedroom with the master bath. Several picture frames adorn multiple bookshelves, and Sansa picks them up as they go; tilts them this way and that, and settles them back down reverently when she’s done scrutinizing. She’s in more than one of them. She moves on to the books, fingers brushing down their spines. He watches her move about his space, turning slowly on her heel, perceptive gaze landing here and there. He feels dressed down, exposed, but it’s not a _bad_ feeling altogether. Her curiosity doesn’t bother him.

“I should’ve known.” She waves her hands towards his shelf as an explanation. “Histories, histories, and more histories.”

“I like what I like.”

“And that’s to be bored to sleep, I suppose.”

“There’s action and adventure. Some romance. Not all histories are drier than the desert.”

“If you say so.”

Done teasing him, he expects her to leave, but she surprises him by sitting down at the edge of his bed. Even more so when she takes a breath and stretches up, and falls back into his sheets with a sigh. She wriggles up until only her feet hang over the edge. Her hair spreads out like a halo around her head. “Jon,” she says. “I’m tired. So tired.”

“A little presumptive of you to snag my bed.”

She toes her shoes off. They land to the floor with a thump. Her socks are light pink and scallop-edged. “We can share,” she says. Her eyes are closed now. “I don’t mind.”

The breezy tone is back. He doesn’t resist the urge to wrap his fingers around her ankle and smooth his thumb against delicate bone. Anyone could mistake her for fragile, but he knows better. “Let me get you a change of clothes.”

He finds her a t-shirt and shorts, both faded black and well-worn, and leaves her to change with a vague excuse of letting Ghost out one last time. The sheets rustle and the bed creaks as he retreats, and he imagines her pulling her shirt over her head; sees brassy blonde hair tumbling down the notches of her spine.

“You can look now,” she says when he returns, teasing again. She’s since crawled under his duvet and made herself home.

The game she’s playing is foreign. He doesn’t want to engage until he has the pieces and understands the rules. He takes his time coming to bed; flosses, brushes his teeth, then double-checks the locks on the windows and doors, and turns off all the lights he left on. 

The second time around, Sansa’s breathing deeply and even on her side, and he slips under the covers. She sucks in a breath, and he reaches out, fingertips brushing against the soft skin of her upper arm. “Just me,” he whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

She does, and he follows soon after.

  
  
  


The watery light of the morning pulls him awake. He feels more well-rested than he has in ages, even if he’s slept less than usual, and he knows it has everything to do with Sansa’s body tucked up against him. He grew up bunking with the Starks and slept in Robb’s bed more than his own. Arya and Bran and Rickon wriggled and elbowed their way under and over limbs back then. He was always burning up from body heat. Years later, he’s still not used to sleeping alone.

His fingers itch to brush her hair back, and that’s how he’s caught -- fingertips hovering over her brow. She blinks and a slow, tentative smile curls at her mouth. He gives in, and rakes his fingers through her hair, a slow and gentle glide against his scalp. Her eyelids flutter. The thigh wedged between his shifts.

They breathe together in the quiet space between wakefulness and sleep until the sun breaks the horizon. When it does, he asks a very important question about breakfast.

  
  
  


She cracks a smile when he hauls out the waffle maker from the deep depths of his cabinet. She gifted it to him when he moved out on his own; a gag gift to go with a history book she insisted was _boring_ , along with a heartfelt note to do well at Castle Black. It’s seen more uses than he’ll admit.

It’s an easy dance; he sets up, she riffles through his fridge. He reaches around her to grab the cooking spray and she mixes flour into the wet batter. 

The first batch is ticking down its minute timer when she turns and gripes the counter, knuckles white.

“He said I looked like her,” she says. “My mother.”

He stills.

“After-- after everything, I had to leave. Get away for a bit, you know? Clear my head and pretend like the entire world wasn’t falling down our ears. Aunt Lysa let me stay with her in King’s. But she didn’t tell me _Uncle Petyr_ would be there, too.” She rolls her shoulders. “For a while I thought things would be different. Better. I was naive. Nothing’d changed.”

Jon wants to kill him. Petyr Baelish is nothing more than a fly buzzing around the vulture swooping in on carrion.

“He took my papers so I couldn’t come home when I wanted to. He told me it was to protect me. I don’t even know if Aunt Lysa _knew,_ but… _I_ knew it wasn’t normal. But I watched him put my wallet in the safe and pretended some more. I wanted to call you a thousand times, but I thought--”

Her sentence chokes off, and the tears come.

After Robb’s funeral, they all made mistakes. Every single one of them.

For years, Jon believed his and Sansa’s transgressions were the worst. Who fucks their best friend’s sister directly after his funeral? Who pins her down by the throat, and who gets off on watching the tears slip from the corners of her eyes?

They found comfort in one another and little else. It was primal codependency he’s never been able to match and never again wants to. They could spend days fucking and sleeping on repeat, and so they did. It wasn’t healthy. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her, and the depths of how far he’d be willing to go scared him.

One of them had to let go. From the start, Jon always knew it was going to be him.

There’s no use in telling her she could’ve called him. That if she asks him to jump, even now, he’d simply ask her preferred height.

She didn’t ask. She escaped on her own.

“This was my last ‘fuck you’,” she says. Her hair. “I won’t let him take anything more from me.”

  
  
  
  


Breakfast is cold by the time they get to it, and they doze on the couch watching reruns of _Jonquil_ afterward. Sansa’s head is pillowed in his lap. Ghost’s massive head weighs down his feet. The day feels like it could stretch on forever, but he knows it can’t. He should take her to Winterfell. Messages from Arya have sent his phone buzzing all morning. As obvious as their differences may be, the Stark sisters love each other deeply.

As if sensing the coming end, she stirs. “Tell me a secret.”

His heart skips a beat. _I still love you. I never stopped loving you_. It’s on the tip of his tongue, but he recognizes the words for what they are: Emotional manipulation. Sam says grand declarations are meaningless without change. He’s not convinced he’s changed enough to ever be good enough for her.

“I started seeing a therapist,” he says instead. It’s not a real secret. He’s not afraid to admit he’s getting help. Not anymore. But it’s something about himself he hopes pleases her. “Mormont insisted.”

“Yeah?”

“I resisted, at first. But… yeah, it’s been good for me. Sam’s got his shit together more than anyone I know. I think it’s rubbed off on me.” He knuckles the inner corner of his eye. “And talk therapy led to group therapy.” 

He briefly explains his schedule. He’s down to once a month with Sam, and group every other week. Brienne leads the rag-tag huddle of veterans from the Wall. It swells and shrinks each session like the tide; sometimes familiar faces, and sometimes not. She’s no-nonsense, and Jon thinks Sansa and her would get along. Sansa gets along with most everyone. Brienne, despite her guarded nature, does, too.

She sits up. He can’t discern the expression on her face. 

She threads their fingers together again. “I’m proud of you.”

He tries to shrug off the compliment that strikes his chest like an arrow, but she doesn’t let him. Her eye contact is too much. His throat is tight. His pulse races.

The hug is evitable, but his own tears are a surprise. They slip down his nose and drip into her hair. He presses his cheek tight against her crown. Her face is tucked into his neck. Tight hiccuping noises fill the room amid the drone of the television. He can’t tell if it’s from her or him. The last time he cried was in group as he recounted the night Pyp died in his arms. He hates it as much as he craves the release, but where he expects to find shame instead discovers peace. Even now, Sansa brings out only the best in him.

  
  
  
  


They pick his car up from the parking lot of The Crow together. Sansa wears a pair of his old jeans and an even older hoodie. Sunglasses she doesn’t need are tucked up in her hair like a headband. He offers his palm to her between the gearshift and she takes it with a smile that reaches her eyes.

A weight’s been lifted from his shoulders, but he’s wise enough to know the reprieve is only temporary. There is no simple fix in life. Nothing box dye can permanently stain. Touch-ups are required, always. The best part is he knows how and a guaranteed fall system to catch him if he can’t go through alone.

Everything feels new. Brighter. More colorful. 

It’s because he’s looking at things differently now, isn’t it? A voice suspiciously like Brienne supplies the word he’s looking for, but he doesn’t dare say it aloud. He brings his and Sansa’s joined hands to his lips. His stomach swoops.

“Take me home,” Sansa says.


End file.
